Chronic strain,daily work stress and pain among workers with rheumatoid arthritis: Does job stress make a bad day worse?

The structure of the job and the daily experience of work are challenges for workers with rheumatoid arthritis. Yet little is known about how these two factors interact to put workers with chronic pain at risk for worse pain on a given day. This exploratory 20 workday diary study of 27 workers with rheumatoid arthritis used hierarchical linear modelling to examine how the structure of the job and neuroticism moderate the relationship between daily undesirable work events (daily stressors), and pain reports within a day. On days with more undesirable work events compared to days with fewer events, individuals with jobs associated with job ‘strain’ (high demand/low control) reported greater midday pain, irrespective of neuroticism and negative mood, than workers with other combinations of demand and control. These findings demonstrate the utility of analysing fluctuating within-person relationships among pain, mood and daily work stressors within the context of the structure of the job, and helps to explain why daily work stressors result in worse health outcomes for some but not all workers with RA.     

Frame-changing in the media coverage of a school shooting: The rise of Columbine as a national concern

This essay explores the media frame-changing process in the news coverage of the 1999 Columbine shootings, clarifying the news discourse focus on Columbine's national importance. The study applies the van Dijk/Bell scheme of media analysis to 683 news articles from print and broadcast media published within 30 days following the incident. Insight is offered into the thematic content of the Columbine coverage, including the school shooting event itself, reactions, and commentaries. Analysis indicates that the initial focus of the coverage was what happened at Columbine, but over time the news increasingly highlighted Columbine's national salience.     

Do hours matter? The relationship between motivation and study intensity in learners of English in Scotland

This paper examines the impact of English language learners’ motivation on their choice of study intensity using data from a national survey of learners in publicly funded English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses across Scotland. In particular, the motivation of learners attending only a few hours per week (i.e. very part-time learners) is compared with those attending for more hours. Our study found that there are differences in motivation and aspiration amongst very part-time and part-time or full-time learners but also that employment and child care may have as much influence as motivation in causing learners to enrol on very part-time English classes. The findings relating to these learners in our study present a particular challenge to ESOL providers which offer only very part-time courses.     

Thinking of you: Relations between mind‐mindedness,theory of mind,and social anxiety traits in middle childhood and adulthood

The mapping of developmental relations between social cognition and real‐world social behaviors has theoretical and practical importance. In the domain of social anxiety, however, studies examining links between social cognitive ability and anxiety have produced mixed results. One potential explanation is that varied facets of social cognition are differentially linked to social anxiety across development. To better understand how social cognition relates to social anxiety, we assessed multiple facets of two important social cognitive capacities—mind‐mindedness and theory of mind— in school‐aged children aged 7–12 and young adults aged 18–24. We also measured social anxiety traits. We found that, across ages, mind‐mindedness and theory of mind were not related to each other. Additionally, for children and adults, higher levels of social anxiety correlated with higher levels of mind‐mindedness toward close social partners, indicating an increased propensity to describe partners using mental state terms. By contrast, social anxiety was not correlated with theory of mind, which measured the ability to decipher or attribute mental states to photographs, videos, or story characters. These findings offer insight into how different components of social cognition are related and how more naturalistic measures of social cognition involving relationships may relate to social anxiety across development.     

Integrated Approaches for the Public Health Prioritization of Foodborne and Zoonotic Pathogens

To address the persistent problems of foodborne and zoonotic disease, public health officials worldwide face difficult choices about how to best allocate limited resources and target interventions to reduce morbidity and mortality. Data‐driven approaches to informing these decisions have been developed in a number of countries. Integrated comparative frameworks generally share three methodological components: estimating incidence of acute illnesses, chronic sequelae, and mortality; attributing pathogen‐specific illnesses to foods; and calculating integrated measures of disease burden such as cost of illness, willingness to pay, and health‐adjusted life years (HALYs). To discuss the similarities and differences in these approaches, to seek consensus on principles, and to improve international collaboration, the E.U. MED‐VET‐NET and the U.S.‐based Food Safety Research Consortium organized an international conference convened in Berlin, Germany, on July 19–21, 2006. This article draws in part on the deliberations of the conference and discusses general principles, data needs, methodological issues and challenges, and future research needs pertinent to objective data‐driven analyses and their potential use for priority setting of foodborne and zoonotic pathogens in public health policy.